Tag: partly

At the step-ledge she hoped to see Captain Munro again, but the swinging rope ladder must have wound down, and, if she was still there, she hung out of view. Partly turned to face out from the gunwale clutching the stanchion behind her and inspecting the leap she’d have to make over to the galley window. When she was first moving around the Marcail, the walkway back to the pilothouse ladder had felt dangerously narrow; she expected to slip at any step and slide through the haphazard gunwale into the air and to the ground far below. Looking at it sideways like this—having to get from the outside to the inside—it now looked impossibly wide.

Partly tried to keep her focus on the step and the window, but she ended up looking past her feet anyway. Below her the gunwale railing curved to meet the starboard railing in a muted point at the bow of the Marcail ten feet below. There, the secondary wheel sat disengaged and locked at the apex. She imagined herself tangled in the bars and spokes of that crevice with a broken leg or two if she fell. Then she imagined herself bouncing off the wheel, past the Captain, and into the sky below. The veneer of calm Mr. Cameron’s words had placed on her transformed to a flop sweat.

“Good. Good.” Above, Mr. Cameron’s face showed in the pilothouse door like she’d summoned him. He hadn’t asked if she was doing ok or if she was scared, he had just assumed she was and praised her efforts thus far like she was doing math at the kitchen table. He was gone again before she could speak.

“Dude!” Partly huffed. She wanted help. She wanted someone to tell her to place her right foot on the step and leap across with her left. She wanted someone to count her down and say ‘go’. She realized with a half-grin that she just given herself all the instructions or encouragement she was going to get. She edged her right foot over as far as she could on the step. Captain Munro couldn’t wait for help much longer.

“Onetwothree!” Partly pushed off with the left. From the instant her foot left the gunwale railing she knew it would not reach the window ledge. It was going to toe the edge and bend back painfully or hit just below on the flat wall with no grip or it was going to wiff into nothingness and she’d crack her chin before tumbling to her two broken legs in the wheel below. Partly gave a little hop on her right foot at the peak of her too-short leap and threw her upper body at the window. It ended up both worse and better than she first thought. Better because she didn’t cartwheel to her death, worse because all the weight that didn’t fall on her armpit threatening to sever her right arm from her body as she hit the edge was divided evenly between her chin clonking that edge and the fingers on her left hand slapping and scraping and missing their grip. The rounding curve of the galley bulkhead meant her toes tread air.

“The Captain and I have drilled for this, so bobbing the Marcail is unlikable but not unplanned. Take a deep breath, please.”

It was hard not to do as she was told, so she did take a breath.

“You did this on purpose?”

“The hull is thicker and the raiders are now behind us. And you were in a harness.”

“Sorry.” The wind swirled Partly’s brown hair into her face, and she tucked it behind her ears.

“No matter. You’re still with us and you can help. I need to you reset the [brackets] so we don’t have to stay bobbed. You’ve seen that trapdoor in the galley?”

Partly nodded. She had an idea what he was going to say next.

“I love your smile.” But she was wrong. “Climb down the railing there to the step in the deck. You can now use that as a ledge to slide over to the galley window where you get in. Climb over to that trapdoor—it should be open already. If not, get it open. Sit on the door to latch the four [brackets] back in place. It doesn’t matter the order you do them, but I find it easier to do the bottom ones first. OK?”

What he’d just described sound impossible, Partly nodded anyway because it all made sense.

“I’ve got to go.” And he did. [Partly was alone.]

She aimed her face to the front to blow her hair back, then began climbing down the gunwale railing. At one gap where a bright blue plastic panel and a terracotta red metal one met she spied a raider air-bike keeping pace with the Marcail. Long coils of rope trailed back from the woman riding it. Partly continued down to the step-ledge.

At the step-ledge she hoped to see Captain Munro again, but the swinging rope ladder must have wound down, and, if she was still there, she hung out of view. Partly turned to face out from the gunwale clutching the stanchion behind her and inspecting the leap she’d have to make over to the galley window. When she was first moving around the Marcail, the walkway back to the pilothouse ladder had felt dangerously narrow. She expected to slip at any step and slide through the haphazard gunwale into the air and to the ground far below. Looking at it sideways like this—having to get from the outside to the inside—it now looked impossibly wide.

“I’ll get Mr. Cameron! He can help.” Partly moved from prostrate to upright so quickly she never heard the Captain croak, “No, wait.”

Partly sprinted around the galley to the pilothouse ladder. A series of four pops and four clangs rang out below deck. The Marcail pitched sharply to a dive as she grabbed a rung with one hand. The deck underfoot became a hill and the ladder overhead an impossible set of monkey bars. For a moment she hung by one hand on the ladder parallel to the Marcail’s deck sharing Captain Munro’s fate, but she caught her toe on the railing next to her. Once she stood to get a second hand on the ladder rung, she also got a better footing on the rail.

Mr. Cameron cursed in the pilothouse above her. She was sure it was one of the few times in his life he’d done so. It was meaningful and brief.

Partly looked down past her feet and past the bow of the Marcail to the trees below. They weren’t coming up—rather they weren’t going down. The Marcail maintained it’s altitude and direction, but it did so bow down and stern up. Then Captain Munro pendulumed into view. Good, Partly thought, she’s still there.

“Mr. Cameron!”

“Just a moment, please,” he replied gently. She heard him grunt and despite clinging to the edge of the ship felt a little embarrassed interrupting his efforts.

“Miss Partly?” Partly manuevered around to see Mr. Cameron had appeared at the doorway at the end of the ladder in what was now the ceiling above her. “I’m going to need your help.”

“Yes, but…” He slightly moved his palm-out hand. She stopped speaking again.

“Is Captain Munro alive?”

“Yes,” Partly said. Mr. Cameron’s steady voice and imperturbable calm warmed a part of her she hadn’t realized had gone cold. She removed one hand from the rung and brushed the grit and chilled sweat on her shorts.

“The Captain and I have drilled for this, so bobbing the Marcail is unexpected but not unplanned. Take a deep breath, please.”